From the Lead Pastors Desk for June 11

Last week, we celebrated Pentecost and the coming of Holy Spirit. How do you know a person is filled with the Holy Spirit? I want to suggest three ways: By the way they walk, by the way they talk and by the way they smell.

Walk. Several passages in Scripture talk about: “Walk in the Spirit.” (Gal. 5:16) “Walk in love.” (Eph. 5:2) “Walk in the light.” (1 John 1:7)

That is, as you go through life, there is something about your life that is characterized by the Spirit, characterized by love, and characterized by the light. This is not about an event; this is about the way you move through life, the way you go about your business, the way you pay your bills, the way you talk to the neighbors, the way you talk about the neighbors, the way you treat your wife and your kids and your husband and your family.

And the first evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit is not what a person might stand up and claim, but the way they walk through life

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Talk. Jesus stated in Matt. 12:34: “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” He said, in effect, if you want to know what is going on in a person’s heart, hang around long enough to listen to what comes out of their mouth. Not just when on their best behavior– we can all say the right things. But as you spend time with folks, when they are relaxed, when their guards are down, what comes out of their mouth will give you evidence of what’s going on in their hearts.

It is very interesting to me that in all but one of the references to being filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts and Ephesians, something happens to the mouth as a result.

On the Day of Pentecost, they spoke in other tongues in such a way that 15 nationalities present in Jerusalem heard in their own language the wonderful things of God. And then you find “full of the Spirit, Peter said,” or “Paul, full of the Spirit, said.”

In Ephesians 5, “Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” etc. when a person is filled with the Spirit, something happens to their mouth. And what happens to their mouth is not about them. It’s about God doing something.

Smell. You say, “Well, where did you get that from?”2 Cor. 2:14: “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere” (listen to this) “the fragrance of the knowledge of him. “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. “To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.”

Christ spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him. The very atmosphere of our lives speaks of Christ, points to Christ.

It’s not always comfortable. It is totally predictable that people would dislike the Spirit-filled Christian because the smell of life, which has all kinds of implications, they may hate it. It will expose their own smell of death.